Month: June 2020

Say a Prayer for Hollywood

hollywood_69059

Hollywood is in deep trouble.

Years ago people used to say to me that it really didn’t matter what folks in Hollywood said or did. No one says that to me anymore.

Those of us who are old enough to have witnessed and who fully understand the pivotal role that Hollywood plays in American culture know all too well that Hollywood has completely lost its way.

Over the past few decades there has been an intellectual, social, and moral slide in which Hollywood has actively engaged. The result has been more corrosive on our society than anyone could ever have imagined.

The good news is that we have reached the tipping point, and it has arrived in the form of a movie. The film is called “Habit,” and it is a sinister work that attacks the God of our founding, the Lord of our ancestors, and the Holy One of the ages.

In this blasphemous production, God is a woman.

This alone is enough to offend many people of faith. But the religious-minded among us have found ourselves in this position many times in the past, times in which we merely suffered the affront, chalked it up to free expression and artistic license, and politely rose above it.

In this heinous production, God is not only a woman, but a promiscuous one.

In the tradition of many religious people, promiscuity is a failing, albeit a common one not unlike myriad other stumbles, but nevertheless a serious failing on the part of the individual. Needless to say, when people of faith stumble, they seek forgiveness from The Author of Perfection who always was, is, and will be unblemished.

In this distorted production, God is a female who is attracted to multiple other women.

For people who adhere to the scriptural content of the Old Testament as well as those who embrace both the Old and the New, The Divine Designer created man and woman, and sexual attraction is specifically an innate desire that rests within earthly beings.

In this sacrilegious production, God is a drug dealer.

Here again, believers hold fast to the truth that the God of Our Fathers is sinless. To imply otherwise takes His Holy Name in vain and is a grave offense against Him and against those who worship and adore Him.

And so it is that everyone who is still watching what Hollywood is providing as entertainment for us, in all of its various forms, gets to pick a side.

“Habit” stands as a virtual line in the sand. We are either for its release or against it. We are either willing to tell any company that would facilitate the circulation of this egregious product that we will no longer consume any of its entertainment fare or we fold and give them yet another pass. And we either stand for God or turn our backs.

God’s nature and His identity as God-made-flesh are central tenets of the deeply held beliefs of more than two billion religious people around the globe. Hopefully in this tipping point, God’s side of the scale will be the one that prevails.

Several organizations are now seeking the film’s cancellation. Ted Baehr, founder of Movieguide and the Christian Film & Television Commission (CFTC), recently told The Christian Post that “Habit” crosses a line “that should not be crossed.” The Movieguide site is promoting a petition by the CFTC on CitizenGo.org, which as of this writing has more than 210,000 signatures from people who hope to stop this movie in its ugly tracks.

Another petition, which was started by OneMillionMoms.com, a division of the American Family Association, has been signed by almost 70,000 people.

“Habit” does not yet have a release date or distribution deal. However, with the entertainment industry’s track record, it is likely that those who have invested substantial sums of money in the production of the film will move forward in some fashion with its release.

We need to say a prayer for Hollywood and for our culture.

In the meantime, we need to keep a watchful eye on Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and other platforms. In this digital era, films go straight to home theaters.

That’s where God’s side has to be willing to be a cancel culture all its own.

The Church of Woke

skiy9lstr8g83rx5qdlxazqldkahaaf0pdv4htoc_cw

All of us need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are uniquely made, that we are here on this earth for a purpose, and that our lives have transcendent meaning.

If these innate characteristics go unfulfilled, or if life’s trials simply wear us down, our hearts become hardened and our spirits flaccid.

Wittingly or unwittingly, we find ourselves on a quest for the seemingly elusive someone or something that has placed these components deep within us.

We instinctively know that whoever or whatever is the originator of these inner sensibilities is greater than ourselves.

What we are not always cognizant of, though, is the fact that also built into us is the need to bow down to a power that is greater than ourselves.

And bow down we all do.

Like it or not, we all serve somebody. So who do you serve?

Some of us have the peace of always having had the answer to that question. Others have drifted in and out of certainty. And then there are those who don’t think that any of the things described above pertain to them.

But of course they do, as hopefully they will someday be able to recognize in themselves.

At the present time, a newfound spiritual group has assembled together. Members of the group have populated the social media with a creed of sorts, establishing a religion that could aptly be called “The Church of Woke.”

The fledgling church exhibits attributes of religious institutions that have come before it. However, its belief system is antithetical to the time-honored faiths of our country and of the world.

Members of The Church of Woke claim to seek a world in which no inequality exists and everything is paid for without anyone ever having to work. Rather than comparing our nation to other countries, they compare it to the utopia that their religion claims to offer.

The Church of Woke is dead set on disparaging, demeaning, and destroying all things related to traditional religious institutions. It adamantly rejects what it views as archaic absolute standards. Above all else it embraces moral relativism, which has no philosophical leg to stand on. No reasoning allowed, just sheer emotion. According to The Church of Woke, the only way forward is to tear down everything.

Adherents harbor a fierce hatred for America. This is because the notion that our country is the repository of evil has been drilled into their heads. The whole Western World is viewed as having a sinister history, ideology, and political bent. Wrongs are categorized as “systemic” and are therefore incapable of ever being corrected.

The Church of Woke is enlisting new members every day and converting them to the “correct” way of thinking. Services have taken the form of street protests, and prayers, the endlessly repeated worn-out chants of radicals past.

Followers of The Church of Woke consider themselves to be today’s chosen people. No way do they have to follow traditional rules of law. They are completely free to express any degree of hostility toward anyone they wish. They are also allowed to punish anyone who fails to bow to them.

Yes, we all serve somebody. And the reality is, the choice of whom we serve has clearly become a binary one.

Whose Land Is It Anyway?

nintchdbpict000588630535-2

The date is June 8, 2020. The place is a few neighborhood blocks located in Seattle, Washington. The time, otherworldly.

An assembled mob cordons off approximately six blocks of land in the downtown section of the city. No longer wishing to be part of the United States, the group declares that the land it has seized is now a sovereign nation.

The land is then christened with an official sounding name, CHAZ, which the mob explains stands for “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.”

Other details about the nation-in-formation quickly emerge, such as CHAZ is not subject to local, state, or federal laws. Strict borders are in place. So are armed guards and even a self-proclaimed “warlord.”

Many folks might think that the events described above could never really happen in America, but they have.

Folks might also think that even if such things were ever to occur, elected leaders at the local and state levels would surely jump into action to right the wrongs. But no, they haven’t.

In fact, Washington’s Democrat Governor Jay Inslee recently became the subject of ridicule when he pretended to be unaware of the fiasco that was taking place in the largest city in his state. His feigned ignorance was on display for all to see. So was the CHAZ story, which was being covered by every media outlet on the planet.

In the land outside of the CHAZ borders, meaning the actual city of Seattle, Democrat Mayor Jenny Durkan was engaging in a little pretend of her own. Not only did she abdicate her responsibility as mayor of all of the constituents in her city, she decided to play head cheerleader for the lawless mob, which had taken over the city blocks and the police precinct to boot.

Despite numerous credible reports of CHAZ residents brandishing weapons and damaging public and private property, Durkan continued to flaunt her obliviousness.

During a CNN appearance with Chris Cuomo, Durkan described the armed takeover of her city as a mere “block party.”

When Cuomo asked how long she intended to allow the illegal occupation of the city to continue, her response was cavalier to the nth degree.

“I don’t know. We could have a summer of love,” Durkan responded.

Seattle City Council Member Kshama Sawant went further than both the governor and mayor.

In a recent CNN appearance, Sawant used phrases such as “incredible movement” and “incredibly inspiring” to describe the CHAZ occupation.

Meanwhile local Seattle residents are suffering and are in dire need of help. Reportedly, there is a mafia-style “protection racket” going on, with shakedowns and other criminal activity being inflicted on average ordinary people who are unlucky enough to have been swept up in the leftist vortex.

Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best informed her officers via a video address that the police had “received reports that these armed people may be demanding payment from business owners in exchange for some of that protection.”

As a law enforcement professional, Best seems to be expressing the frustration felt by so many with regard to the governor and mayor, who are allowing criminal behavior to go unabated.

“We’ve also heard that they may be demanding to see identification from people who live in the area,” Best said.

Extremist groups who have lassoed the land are engaging in another form of extortion in their submission of a ludicrous list of demands. They are seeking, among other things, the complete removal of police, new trials for convicts of color, the racial segregation of hospitals, and free college tuition.

Best also indicated that the CHAZ takeover has caused police response times to be tripled because of the occupation.

“These are responses to emergency calls — rapes, robberies, and all sorts of violent acts that have been occurring in the area that we’re not able to get to,” Best said.

President Donald Trump has made it clear that if the local elected leaders continue to fail to act, he will provide the necessary help.

The president has the legal authority to intervene militarily using the Insurrection Act of 1807. There have been scores of times that prior presidents have done just that. In the 20th century alone, there were more than a dozen such uses.

–Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower, each invoked the

Insurrection Act one time.

–President George W. Bush did so twice.

–Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson each invoked the act four times.

Although Democrats and their media allies are claiming that the commander in chief must be invited before he can provide federal military remedies, the president does not necessarily need a governor to issue a request before using the military for domestic law enforcement. The legislation itself grants the president broad discretion in making his decision.

Use of the military involves risks, which include injury and sometimes loss of life. As has been the pattern for President Trump going all the way back to the 2016 election, the mainstream media are going to find a way to blame him anyway, for positives, negatives, and everything in between.

So whose land is it anyway?

Not a mob of leftists, that’s for sure.

The Roots of the Riots

2e7cba03-8187-409e-a46e-af276f2d6b61-large16x9_grandrapids

A peculiar phrase recently became a trending topic on Twitter. Its words read as follows: “Attack and Dethrone God.”

These same words were displayed on a graphic during a segment that had previously aired on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

Language contained in the graphic was intended to be a backdrop for a guest of host Laura Ingraham named Terrie Turchie, a former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division.

Turchie was discussing ideas that had once been fostered by a violence-based group from our nation’s past, the Weather Underground.

In his appearance, Turchie drew parallels between the recent rioting and mayhem that plagued urban areas across America and the insidious activities in which the notorious 1960s group had engaged.

As Turchie noted, in the wake of its efforts the Weather Underground had left an intriguing package behind, which took the form of a book-length manifesto.

If all went according to a warped wish list, the manifesto would be adopted as a blueprint for future like-minded radicals to use. Its title, “Prairie Fire.”

“They had a major goal, and that goal was to form a communist revolution,” Turchie stated.

Authors of “Prairie Fire,” which include the familiar subversive names of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, referenced the goal of bringing down the United States government.

“We are a guerrilla organization,” the authors wrote. “We are communist women and men.”

As the Fox guest distilled six strategies that the Weather Underground had laid out in its manifesto, a graphic appeared on the screen with the following objectives listed:

–Destroy Capitalism

–The Weapon of Choice – Systemic Racism and Police Racism

–Identify the Victim Classes

–Organize the Victim Classes

–Engage in International Solidarity with the Global Movement

–Attack and Dethrone God.

The resemblance to the rhetoric used by today’s activist organizations and their allies is, to say the least, highly disturbing.

Back in the day, the Weather Underground used a benign-sounding term to summarize its approach. It turns out to be the same not so benign-sounding term now that leftist activists have been using since President Donald Trump was elected—resistance.

Following Turchie’s appearance, trolls on Twitter took to the internet speedway. The many salient points that Ingraham and Turchie had made were ignored altogether. However, the last phrase that Turchie cited would trigger the dropping of an anvil of snarky social media hate. It dared to mention the Creator of the Universe.

Some in the antagonistic media slid down the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole of fact checking, going on to dismiss the anti-religion phrase and muttering about how the words on the graphic were not actually in the Weather Underground document, at least not those identical words.

For those who are still able to peer into the non-flipped side of the looking glass, the similarities between the Weather Underground and the Antifa movement are striking. This was observed by heralded scholar of the left Noam Chomsky, who happens to be one of the few “progressive” voices who has warned about Antifa.

Back in 2017, Chomsky described Antifa to the Washington Examiner as “a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were.” He also described the group as “a major gift to the Right.”

Chomsky additionally said, “What they do is often wrong in principle…and is generally self-destructive.”

“There’s some limited similarity to the Weather Underground,” Chomsky noted, pointing out that the historical context was different and implying that Antifa was more prone to harming people than the “Weathermen,” who committed their acts “almost always against property, in intent at least.”

There are other things about the two groups that appear to be markedly similar. Both seem to view themselves as possessing the purity of true communist revolutionary beliefs. Both advocate violence, particularly against law enforcement. And both embrace a communist worldview, which requires a fundamental presupposition of a materialistic conception of history, making religion antithetical to communist thought.

Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky wrote, “Religiousness is irreconcilable with the Marxian standpoint.”

Communist co-creator Vladimir Lenin similarly cited atheism as “an inseparable element of the materialist view of life…a necessary condition for the theoretical education of the revolutionist.”

Founder of communism Karl Marx infamously dismissed religion as “the opium of the people” and argued that religion prevents a better communist existence from becoming reality.

The attempt to Dethrone God has been part and parcel of communism from its inception. Atrocities that have been committed against religious people and institutions reflect the hatred for all things relating to the Almighty.

But thankfully, people who have the gift of knowledge that flows from the Spirit know the truth.

No one can ever take the throne from the King of the World.